Netta kept up her spirits by sorting through Gus’s bedroom, dividing stuff to pack and stuff to keep at Brigg Farm.

The other word that Gus kept on screaming at her was: ‘Why?’

‘You’re going to come with me.’ She smiled excitedly but he looked at her with Rae’s blue eyes and said, ‘Why?’

‘Because you belong to me now and we’re going to live in our own little house…’

‘Why?’ he asked, not interested in her packing, pulling out his toys as she pushed them in the trunk.

‘Because I’m your mummy now and we must live where I work.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s the right thing to do. We’re going to have a holiday, just you and me. Won’t that be fine?’

‘Holly… day?’ He looked at her, not understanding. ‘Why?’

Netta felt a flush of irritation at his questions. This was not how it was supposed to be. The stupid child didn’t understand about holidays, but why on earth should he? Gus had never been on a proper holiday in all his three years. He didn’t need to when there was sea and sand, lochs and forests, and such beauty all around him. Then it struck her that Gus had hardly left this farm at all, just the usual weekly visits to town and the clinic perhaps. This was his world and she was going to yank him out of it at the end of the week and transplant him into a strange Yorkshire town.

She could see Gus didn’t understand why she was packing up his toys. Holiday was just a word to mimic. How could she explain to this little boy that he must leave everything he had ever known? Then, to her horror, with one sickening, gut-wrenching jolt of understanding, Netta suddenly realised that she was expecting young Gus to do what had been doled out to her three years earlier only she had been an adult then: to be packed on a train, in exile from loved ones. Would he feel as abandoned and rejected and confused as she had then? Netta was nineteen and it had nearly killed her. How would she explain to a three year old that his little Shetland pony, Bruce, or his heifer calf couldn’t fit into their luggage? That Peg and Angus must be left behind on the station platform?